Apparently, they zap the tin droplet with a soft pulse first to flatten it before hitting it with a big pulse to make the plasma. A former colleague of mine wo

Apparently, they zap the tin droplet with a soft pulse first to flatten it before hitting it with a big pulse to make the plasma. A former colleague of mine worked on tuning the laser-hitting -droplet process. Happens inside a vacuum of course, but after some time the vacuum would always drop. Turns out that when you miss the droplet often enough and thus hit the steel walls of the chamber, eventually you'll punch through the walls. And not be able to hold a vacuum this way. Not sure of just a tall story or true...